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Article: Quasi commodities in the first and third worlds.
- Article from:
- Journal of Economic Issues
- Article date:
- March 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Association for Evolutionary Economics. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Origin and Context of Our Argument
Discussions of health care, welfare reform, reform of the courts, and public schools carried on in terms of efficiency, costs, productivity, and demand imply that these services can be treated as if they were demanded and provided in ways closely analogous to the demands for and supplies of lathes, washing machines, and plastic toys - that is, as if they were truly commodities.
Our argument is that they are not, and that the pretense that they are muddies public debate. We pursue this argument by spelling out some corollaries of the arguments of Karl Marx and Karl Polanyi, corollaries that are implicit in their work but ...